Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

  The sight pains Agnes. Wegeman has humiliated a noble old building.

  "It looks ridiculous," says Agnes.

  "Boy, you really can't be nice," says Wegeman. "But you're right. It does. Is this what you people want? Is it really so important to have this old shitbox tenement standing? You're so obsessed with these stupid fucking buildings. It's like if we keep the old ones around it'll just turn into the good old days again, and we'll have cholera and polio and the eighteen-hour workday."

  Back in the casino there is excitement at the craps table. Duck the monkey has commandeered the dice, and has racked up over twelve thousand Wege dollars. The pit boss doesn't know what to do. When Wegeman rolls up, he delivers frantic explanations. The Great Man waves his hand, unconcerned.

  "Don't worry," he says, jerking his thumb at the monkey. "He doesn't know when to quit."

  Sure enough, on the next throw, the monkey loses it all. The croupier sweeps in the money. A Courtesy Girl appears with a silver tray. On the tray are bananas, a pear, and a baby bottle of milk. The monkey takes a swig of milk and buries his sad, chattering face in the Courtesy Girl's cleavage.

  During dinner, in the Marble Courtyard, the protesters arrive. They march four abreast down the sidewalk, led by the Rollicking Reverend Lenten Gunn himself. The protesters sing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. The Reverend's bass voice carries below everyone else's. It can be heard cutting through the Benny Goodman arrangement and the drunken reveling and the fireworks exploding over the ocean.

  There must be 200 marchers. The cops tense. The horses whinney. The marchers approach the Palace. Reverend Gunn holds up his arm like a trail boss, and the march comes to a stop. Reverend Gunn is streaked with perspiration. Two nurses descend on him with stethoscope and sphygmomanometer.

  Monkey perched on his shoulder, the Great Man meets the marchers. Fireworks continue to explode; green and red spiders appear and fade slowly in the sky.

  "Hello, Rev," says the Great Man.

  "Evening, Mr. Wegeman," comes the reply. "Lovely night, isn't it? A sugar breeze and a pancake sky. You ever been to the Carolinas?"

  "Only to check my strip mining interests."

  "We are here to bless this enterprise," says the Reverend. "May hostilities cease between us. We shall interfere no longer."

  Wegeman throws open his garden party to the Reverend's flock. Two hundred members of the First Congregation of Neptune Avenue eat the food, gawk at the architecture, and sway (they are too pious to dance) to the Big Band music.

  Madelaine Wegeman looks like one of the caged dancers on Shindig. She pulls Agnes off to the side. "Isn't it marvelous? Things are really working out. I'm so happy for Weege. You're a good luck charm. Tell me, while we're on the subject of my family, is Sarah happy, do you think?"

  "I guess so," says Agnes. "She's excited about her movie."

  Madelaine finishes her drink and sucks in her cheeks. "She doesn't seem happy when we're together. She can be very critical of me. But I think all mothers have that effect on their daughters."

  "I think you're right," says Agnes.

  "Wait until you have children," says Madelaine.

  "The way things are going, I don't see it happening," says Agnes.

  Madelaine doesn't seem to hear her. "God, this has been a bad year. Weege still isn't functioning."

  Agnes is unprepared for such intimacy. "I'm sorry."

  "Sarah loves staying with you," says Madelaine brightly. "I wish I could be her friend. Do you think she could call me? Once a week, late at night..."

  So sad, thinks Agnes. So pathetic. So like her own relationship with her mother. "I'll put in a good word for you."

  "She can call any time at night," says Madelaine. "Take this phone number. I'm there after ten. Thank you, Agnes. Thank you. And take these—I insist."

  Madelaine hands Agnes front row seats to the controversial all-Korean Le Nozze di Figaro, the one set in a fruit market.

  Madelaine glides away. Agnes absently looks at the phone number she has provided.

  424-8399.

  Meaningless digits, a seven-number coordinate, pinpointing some unspecified location in the city.

  GA-4-8399.

  Agnes can see the ghosts of extinct telephone exchanges. GAmmadion served the district just west and slightly north of Times Square, including Roseland and St. Basil's.

  Isn't that funny? thinks Agnes.

  Agnes harbors a deep suspicion. In a few weeks she will read a blind item in Cholly Knickerbocker's column in the Graphic: "What fabulously wealthy architectrix/urban reformer/social darling/lapsed Catholic can be seen each morning coming out of Mass at St. Basil's?" Could working on the Times Square Project actually have brought Madelaine and Father Clarence that close together? The notion intrigues Agnes. She thinks old Cholly should stake out St. Basil's the night before. She imagines Madelaine's heels clicking on the stone floor of the catacomb. The passage is very narrow—she must not wear shoulder pads.

  "Do you believe in God, Mr. Wegeman?" asks Reverend Gunn.

  "I have people studying the question."

  "Can't study it, Mr. Wegeman. Got to feel it."

  The Great Man grunts.

  "You got to surrender to the faith, Mr. Wegeman. I tell my people: trust in God—that nigger provides."

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Agnes supervises the documentation of her mother's marriage. Did Hannah and Johnny actually live together as man and wife from the time of the ceremony in April 1944 until his death in 1961? Agnes must assemble a file. She obtains depositions from people she hasn't seen in years, people like Johnny's brother Carl, who still lived in Florida, still plays the horses, and probably still looks like his clothing would slide off him if he changed direction too quickly. "After the accident with Brigette he just stopped drinking cold," Carl tells Agnes. "I never saw him take so much as a sip ever again. That's how your father was." Agnes laughs to herself when she remembers how thrilling she found her father's passion for 7Up and Coke and root beer; soda was a bond they shared.

  Agnes also talks to Hannah's brother, Leon. Leon worked for the telephone company in Nassau County his whole life. He bowled for the telephone company and went on telephone company picnics and spent every New Year's Eve with his wife and fifty other telephone company couples at the elegant Charles' Off The Sagtikos Restaurant. Here was a man who came out of World War II without a marketable skill and owned three homes by the time he retired. Hannah, who could not amass a pension, nonetheless sneered at his enmeshment in the Bell System. Growing up, Agnes loved visiting Uncle Leon. She loved his house with its upstairs, and his reclining chairs, and his TV room, and the bowling alley right down the road (Old Country Lanes--48 Maple Lanes—AMF AccuSet Pinspotters—No Pinboys!) When Agnes talked up Uncle Leon's lifestyle to her mother Hannah would peer down at her daughter with a sour expression and say, "I wouldn't much relish answering to Ma Bell for the rest of my days, Agnes dear. She's rather an overbearing parent." Agnes would be quashed because her mother sounded so right. Hannah had an answer for everything.

  Talking to her relatives about her mother's foolishness makes Agnes angry. She takes out her aggressions in Jo Bailey's martial arts class. She hasn't done Tae Kwon Do since that fateful day she saved the Great Man's life, but it all comes back to her and she competes like a woman possessed, and one symbol for Hannah after another slaps the mats in defeat.

  Agnes sits in on a rehearsal of Scenes From Shakespeare. The Witches are already on stage, Braille scripts in hand. Grace looks bored; Perri dances in place; Doreen studies her lines. The stage lights dim and brighten as Jo works on a technical problem. The lighting director, a sighted boy from Art and Design wearing a ripped tank top and wristbands, comes down from the flies to work on the difficulty. Meanwhile, the cauldron is not in its proper place. "Gem, didn't I tell you to spike this?" says Jo. The other techie, a girl with a crew cut, bounds to the apron of the stage. She lays out the adhesive tape markings within which the cauldron should be p
ositioned.

  Jo's voice rings out from the back of the auditorium. "Let's do it, ladies."

  "When shall we three meet again/In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" says Perri.

  "When the hurlyburly's done/When the battle's lost and won," says Doreen. Agnes doesn't think her delivery quite menacing enough; she might as well be lamenting the cancellation of her Sweet Sixteen party. Perhaps the cloak will help her.

  At the end, all three chant, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair/Hover through the fog and filthy air."

  Jo mocks them without looking up from her script. "Fair is foul and foul is fair and all the rest have thirty-one except little February with twenty-eight...."

  The Witches laugh uneasily. They don't like to displease Miss Bailey.

  "Can we try not to sound so incredibly bored?" says Jo.

  They go through it again. Agnes admires the way she has staged the thing. The actors' movements are necessarily minimal, but the scene never looks static. After a while, Agnes almost forgets that the whole cast is blind.

  The rehearsal is marred by a disagreement between Jo and Miss Lenihan, the Assistant Principal, who has been watching from the back of the auditorium. Miss Lenihan is a frail old woman in a woolen suit. She has a long haggard face. Incongruous diamond posts grace her earlobes, and she wears a cheap bluish-black wig. She is undergoing radiation treatment for liver cancer. "Miss Bailey," she says, "I must remind you to shut off all the lights when you leave at night."

  "I always do."

  "Last night I found a light blazing away right on stage."

  Perri chimes in. "That was the ghost light, Miss Lenihan."

  "The what?"

  "It's a theatrical custom," says Perri. "You leave a light burning for the ghosts that haunt the theater."

  "There are no ghosts here," says Miss Lenihan.

  "Every theater has ghosts," says Jo pleasantly.

  "The point is, Miss Bailey, that we can't be wasting money on this sort of thing," says Miss Lenihan. "Lights for ghosts—our children can't see, I don't understand why our ghosts should be able to."

  "Don't let her bully you, Miss Bailey," says Grace. "If we all just stood up to her, she couldn't get away with it." She flees the auditorium in tears. Being blind, she can't do it that quickly. Jo and Miss Lenihan hang back, permitting her the dramatic gesture.

  Later on, in the bar, Jo tells Agnes, "Lenihan just doesn't like me. When Mr. Pakula left, and I asked to take over the show, she nearly had a fit. I love theater, and I know more about it than anyone else on the faculty. But she said she didn't think a history teacher could do the job."

  "She's living in the past," says Agnes. "She comes from a time when the arts had some mystery to them. Now the whole country knows about the lack of kineticism in Kubrick—his dirty little secret is out in the open."

  "I'm supposed to be a math teacher, but I fell into a history slot, and I didn't see her complaining about that. Anyway, Father Clarence was good about the whole thing. He interviewed people from the outside for Lenihan's benefit, but he told me privately I'd be doing the shows."

  Jo stares coldly and fixedly at the bartender.

  "What's the matter?" Agnes asks.

  "That son of a bitch is pouring me light," says Jo. She says it loudly enough for the bartender to hear, but his face registers no reaction. Jo gets angrier at him, and when she asks for a refill her tone is downright nasty.

  "Excuse me," she says combatively.

  He turns to her. "Hmm?"

  "That's not a double shot. Not anywhere in the country."

  "I'll get the manager."

  "Wait a second," she says. "Don't do that. This is between you and me. Don't call the law. Let's work this out on our own."

  "Look," he says wearily, folding the towel with which he has been wiping down the bar. "I don't measure out the booze. I just program double shot into the register, and out it comes. Only the manager can make adjustments."

  Jo is a bitter, paranoid drunk. Only Agnes is exempt from her wrath. Agnes takes the keys to Jo's jeep and stuffs her in a cab. How can Jo ever look her in the eye again? They have a date to meet in the city the next day; Agnes keeps waiting for Jo's embarrassed call of cancellation. But the telephone never rings. Jo is there at the appointed time, on the steps of the Fifth Avenue Library, all scrubbed and cheerful in khakis with knife pleats and sneakers so white they must dazzle her hung-over eyes.

  "I brought you a coffee," she chirps to Agnes.

  They both have business in the library. Jo is taking graduate courses, on the road to a doctorate. Agnes is here to look up old newspapers. Her lawyer suggested that they obtain the records from the lawsuit Hannah and Johnny filed against the man who ran over Brigette. Agnes needs to find out his name. (Hannah never told her, and Agnes never asked because of the histrionics that were sure to follow.) It never before occurred to Agnes that the account of Brigette's death would be in the newspapers, but why wouldn't it? There were more papers then, and Agnes would bet that there was less mayhem.

  She tries the Times first, but the good gray paper took no notice of the passing of Brigette Travertine. The Herald-Tribune is also silent on the matter. This is a tabloid story, and Agnes finally finds it in the Mirror.

  Her heart pounds as she reads.

  Oh my.

  If she climbed to the library roof and threw herself down upon the great stone steps, she would not suffer the shock she feels at this moment. She slumps back in her chair.

  Jo, sneaking a celery stalk, says, "You okay?"

  All Agnes can do is point to the screen of the microfilm reader. A weight seems to press down on her chest.

  "You're white as a ghost," says Jo. She leans over Agnes's shoulder. Always reluctant to put on her reading glasses, she squints at the screen.

  When, Agnes wonders, was the last time someone threw up in the Main Reading Room?

  Jo reads the story. Her lips move slightly She catches her breath sharply and emits a small cry of fright.

  "Agnes, I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

  "You want to know something?" says Agnes. "Neither did I."

  She knew that Brigette was killed by a drunk driver. And she knew that her father gave up drinking right after the accident. But she never put the two events together. No one ever put them together for her.

  Her father killed her sister.

  Agnes's mind races. Was it kept from her all these years? Or did she know it and purposefully forget it? Hannah has always been willing to talk about the aftermath of Brigette's death, but Agnes can't remember having ever heard her discuss the specifics of the accident.

  The Mirror fills in the gaps.

  May 7, 1950. Hannah was at the hairdresser. Johnny, working nights, was to pick up Brigette at school. He cashed his check at Ehring's Tavern and stayed for a while. At ten minutes to twelve, he remembered his daughter and left the gin mill in a drunken flurry. He drove quickly to the school and, just at the moment he saw little Brigette waiting for him, lost control of the car.

  Agnes cries wildly. She buries her face in Jo's shirt. A guard makes them go to the bathroom. Agnes walks stiff-leggedly. She feels as though she has been in a car crash, as though, newly pried free with the jaws of life, she can still feel the wreckage wrapped around her. She feels mangled. She keeps seeing Brigette's little face, a small oval of innocence. She sees Brigette brighten at the sight of Daddy's car, and then she sees the shadow of uncertainty when the machine heads right for her.

  When Agnes and Jo return to the microfilm readers, someone has taken Agnes's machine. The Mirror and the other newspapers have been put back in their boxes and sent downstairs. They were very dusty when Agnes got them. No one has asked to see them in years. Maybe no one else will ever again.

  Nothing has changed, really. Agnes knows more, that's all.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  For the next week, Agnes moves as though in a fog. She wanders aimlessly around the Infertility offices. She is absolutely useless, but no
one seems to mind, least of all her boss. Infertility certainly doesn't put a lot of pressure on Agnes. She feels hardly employed at all. Margaret has her interviewing potential assistant editors and paging through other magazines in search of design ideas. Maybe they're getting ready to fire her, finally, and they don't want her starting any significant projects.

  "Why don't you take some time off?" says her editor.

  "I thought I already was."

  "Do it at home. It's more fun."